Hard rock sampling tips?

[Assembler]

I really admire you guys out west trying to pry some gold from the ground. It’s hard work, dangerous and costly. Your rewards are well earned for sure. I think if I grew up in gold country I would have gotten hooked. 👍🏻 Stay safe!

Good point about being safe.
In some areas there have been many thousands of people covering the same ground so going under ground is what is left in some spots.

Even if you are not in gold county you can be the first to spot some things that others just walk right over and maybe find a little color.

 

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[Assembler]

Yes. I got a sandbag of each, trying to sample horizontally at each level. One from the top gray material, one of only the deep red, and one of the lower brecciated clay filled tan quartz.

If you happen to just find micro gold / values in this zone may have had liquid / gas iron just passing through or by passing in the near by fisher / fault lines with not much precipitating / dropping out.

You may be able to follow the better part of this reddish quartz to a line where the temperature is more in line of a pocket / precipitating out. Get out some magnification to help with the looking process you may spot this with your eye's in only very good light.

You could start to spot some specks with your eye's as you follow this line looking for event changes to start with.

 

[IDAu]

If you happen to just find micro gold / values in this zone may have had liquid / gas iron just passing through or by passing in the near by fisher / fault lines with not much precipitating / dropping out.

You may be able to follow the better part of this reddish quartz to a line where the temperature is more in line of a pocket / precipitating out. Get out some magnification to help with the looking process you may spot this with your eye's in only very good light.

You could start to spot some specks with your eye's as you follow this line looking for event changes to start with.

How do most guys clean up their hard rock gold?

I have so little in my samples it would be nearly impossible to get it all cleaned and together for an accurate weight. I have so much widely varying mixed mesh gold, with so little, I don’t get a well defined clear gold line on my table. It’s just in my cons after running.

Should I just do a smelt on the cons so I hopefully end up with one small bead?

If my math is correct, 1/2OPT is about a gram every 130 pounds. I’m guessing I’m a lot less than that, but I’m not sure how much tiny gold I’m blowing out trying to finish pan it. The table seemed to reveal a lot more tiny gold that hand panning wasn’t.


Is taking the cons from a 65 pound sample and smelting a good strategy to get a more accurate weight on the bead to math it out? It my math is right, I should end up with a half gram bead if it’s profitable.

 

[ConceptualizedNetherlandr]

If you happen to just find micro gold / values in this zone may have had liquid / gas iron just passing through or by passing in the near by fisher / fault lines with not much precipitating / dropping out.

You may be able to follow the better part of this reddish quartz to a line where the temperature is more in line of a pocket / precipitating out. Get out some magnification to help with the looking process you may spot this with your eye's in only very good light.

You could start to spot some specks with your eye's as you follow this line looking for event changes to start with.

What, pray tell, is 'gas iron' ?

 

[Assembler]

What, pray tell, is 'gas iron' ?

Just slang for a phase transition.

 

[ConceptualizedNetherlandr]

Just slang for a phase transition.

Are you suggesting gaseous iron existed in this rock's formation? Hotter than most if not all known magma? Even the mafic. Hardly to be expected in a mineralization depositional environment.

 

[Assembler]

Are you suggesting gaseous iron existed in this rock's formation? Hotter than most if not all known magma? Even the mafic. Hardly to be expected in a mineralization depositional environment.

Around 2,861 degrees Celsius (5,182 degrees Fahrenheit) iron can transition into a gaseous state made up of individual iron atoms. The time in this state is very short.
A single event can lead to a phase change.

The common liquid form of iron is due to the typical temperature and pressures to be expected in a mineralized zone.

 

[Assembler]

How do most guys clean up their hard rock gold?

I have so little in my samples it would be nearly impossible to get it all cleaned and together for an accurate weight. I have so much widely varying mixed mesh gold, with so little, I don’t get a well defined clear gold line on my table. It’s just in my cons after running.

Should I just do a smelt on the cons so I hopefully end up with one small bead?

If my math is correct, 1/2OPT is about a gram every 130 pounds. I’m guessing I’m a lot less than that, but I’m not sure how much tiny gold I’m blowing out trying to finish pan it. The table seemed to reveal a lot more tiny gold that hand panning wasn’t.


Is taking the cons from a 65 pound sample and smelting a good strategy to get a more accurate weight on the bead to math it out? It my math is right, I should end up with a half gram bead if it’s profitable.

Could it be that the gold in general is passing through different country rocks?
Is the gold in general better closer to iron compared to some other mineral?

The gold could be precipitating out at different amounts due to a temperature change event for that given flow?

Perhaps your results will be more consistent with a 65 - 100lb. sample range that you decide on compared to a much smaller sample?

As you can tell by the questions there is no single answer. Sampling more will start to give you some answers.

 

[IDAu]

Could it be that the gold in general is passing through different country rocks?
Is the gold in general better closer to iron compared to some other mineral?

The gold could be precipitating out at different amounts due to a temperature change event for that given flow?

Perhaps your results will be more consistent with a 65 - 100lb. sample range that you decide on compared to a much smaller sample?

As you can tell by the questions there is no single answer. Sampling more will start to give you some answers.

Yeah after doing the math I’m realizing workable ore should be weighable even in these sample. I didn’t realize that even 1/2opt is still about a gram in 3 buckets. (That still seems rich to me). Even if it’s hard to get it clean, that should be a lot more than I’ve been getting.

I’m going to try and get a good 140 pound sample as soon as I can. I’ve been reading an enormous amount of local geology reports. I saw one that said something about the good veins feathering out into breccia at the end. So I’m wondering if this is that. Just the tail end of extremely low grade.

Either way, I’ve got a hard rock mine with lode gold. I’m happy. As long as I do it right I should be able to not go broke. Couple thousand into it to be able to properly sample and then go from there.

 

[Assembler]

Yeah after doing the math I’m realizing workable ore should be weighable even in these sample. I didn’t realize that even 1/2opt is still about a gram in 3 buckets. (That still seems rich to me). Even if it’s hard to get it clean, that should be a lot more than I’ve been getting.

I’m going to try and get a good 140 pound sample as soon as I can. I’ve been reading an enormous amount of local geology reports. I saw one that said something about the good veins feathering out into breccia at the end. So I’m wondering if this is that. Just the tail end of extremely low grade.

Either way, I’ve got a hard rock mine with lode gold. I’m happy. As long as I do it right I should be able to not go broke. Couple thousand into it to be able to properly sample and then go from there.

If you crush to say around 50 mesh and run over your table or pan this should show you in a general way how much courser values there is in that given test section of that rock. You can then re-crush finer to start to free the fines and weight both up to give some idea what is in the rock.

To speed up the process you could sluice box the course values in that batch. Then crush finer to see the fines.

 

[IDAu]

If you crush to say around 50 mesh and run over your table or pan this should show you in a general way how much courser values there is in that given test section of that rock. You can then re-crush finer to start to free the fines and weight both up to give some idea what is in the rock.

To speed up the process you could sluice box the course values in that batch. Then crush finer to see the fines.

I was thinking about setting up something like that. A small sluice box feeding the table instead of a hopper to catch the coarse stuff.

Wondering if that’s what they were doing. This was left in the Mining shack.

 

[Assembler]

I was thinking about setting up something like that. A small sluice box feeding the table instead of a hopper to catch the coarse stuff.

Wondering if that’s what they were doing. This was left in the Mining shack.

A great way to test in just a very short time and not hours for that rock.

 

[ConceptualizedNetherlandr]

Around 2,861 degrees Celsius (5,182 degrees Fahrenheit) iron can transition into a gaseous state made up of individual iron atoms. The time in this state is very short.
A single event can lead to a phase change.

The common liquid form of iron is due to the typical temperature and pressures to be expected in a mineralized zone.

And the deposition environment is precipitation from water where there is no such thing as gas iron nor even molten iron. High pressure solutions, sure. No gas. Face it you slipped up with 'gas iron' . Only reason we are talking about it now at this depth is because you doubled down on the silly notion.

 

[Assembler]

And the deposition environment is precipitation from water where there is no such thing as gas iron nor even molten iron. High pressure solutions, sure. No gas. Face it you slipped up with 'gas iron' . Only reason we are talking about it now at this depth is because you doubled down on the silly notion.

You may have missed the point of the different events.
The key is the very short events with enough pressure change. The general point is that no two events are the same for the 'deposition environment' (process of adding matter, like soil, rocks, or sediment, to a surface) you are pointing out.

No such thing as gas iron nor even molten iron.

Clarification please as the temperatures in many short events fall well within the melting temperature of common iron in the earth surface crust.

Only reason we are talking about it now at this depth is because you doubled down on the silly notion.

So is it not reasonable to talk / think out side of this limited box of 'deposition environment'?

 

[Assembler]

Are you suggesting gaseous iron existed in this rock's formation? Hotter than most if not all known magma? Even the mafic. Hardly to be expected in a mineralization depositional environment.

Please explain why you refer to a 'if not all known' stagnate pool of magma when there are events happening to cause magma to flow due to a big difference in pressure and temperature zones or areas?
After all most people have seen magma escaping the earth surface with there own eyes.


You may have missed the point of a single event that may involve gaseous iron compared to molten iron or even solid iron.

 

[IDAu]

Question for all your hard rock guys. Why is 1/2 OPT considered the benchmark for minimum profitable grade?

Even on a small hobby table that can do only 200 pounds per hour, in one full day I could process a ton. Most people seem to run several tons a day.

Is it just the crazy cost of overhead such as advancing the tunnel with timber?

With a proper 1 ton per hour set up it seems like you could still make a decent living on 1/4 or 1/8 OPT?

 

[Assembler]

Question for all your hard rock guys. Why is 1/2 OPT considered the benchmark for minimum profitable grade?

Even on a small hobby table that can do only 200 pounds per hour, in one full day I could process a ton. Most people seem to run several tons a day.

Is it just the crazy cost of overhead such as advancing the tunnel with timber?

With a proper 1 ton per hour set up it seems like you could still make a decent living on 1/4 or 1/8 OPT?

The basic question is what is the returns on your time and effort with the costs is it per ton?

The secondary question is if you cut corners on your audit / tunnel will you loose all of your gains if it fails in any way?

The third question that often comes up is how easy is it to keep on the values and will it pinch out?

Additional question what other rock is there reasonable values that the previous mine workers did not work or know about?

Additional question what rock is good enough to work for the required "Discovery work"?